Category: Uncategorized

Your Friends

Be a person who surprises with blessings

The gift of giving gifts comes from knowing that the days that matter are the ones we aren’t expecting anything. A gift makes an impact the further away or the “out of the blue”. My opinion is that birthdays, anniversaries, valentines, Christmas, and other holidays are arbitrary days we mark on a calendar. What do you do with the rest? Make the intent of the days you aren’t obligated to get a present to give the person you love or admire something they need. This requires you to listen to what their pain points are and be able to tailor a personal gift instead of another wine bottle or card they’ll throw away in a month.

The gift of giving gifts comes from knowing that the days that matter are the ones we aren’t expecting anything. A gift makes an impact the further away or the “out of the blue”. My opinion is that birthdays, anniversaries, valentines, Christmas, and other holidays are arbitrary days we mark on a calendar. What do you do with the rest? Make the intent of the days you aren’t obligated to get a present to give the person you love or admire something they need. This requires you to listen to what their pain points are and be able to tailor a personal gift instead of another wine bottle or card they’ll throw away in a month.

Your Coworkers

Empathy is being able to feel what others feel. You are able to put yourself in someone’s place and experience it. People are experts at masking their suffering. It’s a defense mechanism based in biology. Showing a sign of weakness makes us a target for natural selection. In the work setting it’s difficult to be vulnerable because of how others can manipulate our feelings. The intention of empathy must be true and loving. When the intention is quid pro quo, the relationship becomes transactional. It feeds the insecurity and desire to put on a front so we may be favored by certain people. Transactional relationships are fake, insincere, and uncomfortable.

Learning and empathizing with others experiences is how we can understand the motivation of our coworkers. Their perceived weaknesses can become strengths because we are aware and steer away from a non optimal situation. We can anticipate when there might be a distraction in their life and mitigate the effects to the product due to a lack of focus.

The only thoughts we now for sure are our own. Creating a relationship through empathy is how we can compound the group’s productivity by learning what yoke they carry. This may be insecurity or a physical obligation like a child or loved one. By listening to our coworkers, absorbing the experiences they had, we can create an environment where they can excel.

Your Parents

Our environment is what shapes our belief. It’s why those with an incomplete household seem to lack traits as those from the typical nuclear family. What if you didn’t have a strong father figure that could teach you how to fend for yourself? What if you didn’t have a mother that would love you regardless of the crime you committed? The balance is key whether or not your “father” figure is related to you. Whoever that person may be, they usually are much older, experienced, and have taught you about the way they know the world.

You can thank them by acknowledging their advice, even when you don’t follow it. Let them know that they are important to you. Part of growing up is understanding how you can contribute to bettering society. Usually that starts with one person. Gratitude and respect are free to give and invaluable to the people that have mentored and brought you through life.

Showing Tough Love

To switch it up on the parents, there has to be a time where you “let the birds go from the nest”. This may require pushing them out and seeing if they can fly. As much as you want to be the caregiver, you won’t be there forever. Make sure that you allow your children the chance to fail and stand back up. Let them build resiliency while the stakes are much lower than when they finish college or get their first job. We learn best and fastest by doing and iterating until we get it right. Resist the urge to shield your child and they will develop their own armor.

Love differently rather than loving more

When parents have children, the child becomes the center of the world. All work done must be to better care for the kid. Typically, the father will go out and work his butt off to put food on the table as a provider. The mother will nurture the child and make sure they grow until they are out of the house and into the world.

This is normal yet so wrong.

While innocent at first, the priority in how love is given is imbalanced. Children inevitably will be involved in other activities. Sports, clubs, friends, parties all abound throughout school and post graduation. As a parent, there should be a couple rules to follow to ensure that your child doesn’t become the sole meaning of your existence: Make sure the love you show the child is the same intensity as the love you show your spouse Mothers overdue love with their child. Their bond is inseparable. Yet it needs to be balanced with the spouse. Going back to being acknowledged, the best thing a mother can do is to love differently rather than creating an imbalance of affection. Neglect is what sows the feelings of envy, depression, and much more.

Think about the long term effects of loving the child for the next 20 or so years. What happens after they leave? You are left with a neglected husband who you don’t know (or possibly don’t ever care for). What we don’t want is for the mother and father to be running in different circles for a majority of their lives and once it ends they don’t even recognize the partner they fell in love with. Love takes consistent affection. The tank runs empty quickly. Top it off every day to continue the ride through life with your partner.

Make time for both of you intentionally. Get a babysitter, a grandparent, uncle, etc to go out and enjoy each others company Work gives us purpose from 9-5. It is easier to commit to a challenging job for 8 hours a day and then completely unplug until the next day starts. However, the intentionality of the day should not end once your job ends. As a spouse, you need to 1) acknowledge the work your partner has done to take care of the child and 2) show that affection in a way that they can receive it. This can take the forms of the many love languages: words of affirmation, touching, physical labor, etc. Be creative, be spontaneous (read: don’t just do it for anniversaries)

On Nutrition

Calories are always king when trying to manipulate your weight. When you look at every diet trend that has come along it comes in different ways of limiting the amount of calories you consume. The only difference is how they market. Intermittent fasting is a great way to reduce calories because it’s hard to consume a ton of calories in an 8 to 16 hour window without feeling sick. Keto is a great way to lose weight because it limits the amount of carbohydrates that you consume. Fats are more calorie dense, but we don’t tend to snack on them as we would chips, cookies, etc. Whole 30 is what “paleo” is to most people, as close to the source as possible. Natural foods tend to satiate us in lesser amounts than processed food. When we feel full, it’s difficult to eat further. In the end it’s about what will limit your calorie intake: your willpower or what you limit yourself to eating. Dieting/nutrition should be a long term sustainable process. You should have a good relationship with food as you become more intuitive with what you need to live your best life. The moment you feel guilty about having a snack or not being able to enjoy yourself at thanksgiving dinner is when you should reassess your plan.

We are looking for consistency rather than perfection. As long as progress moves incrementally forward over the long term you are on our way to a healthier life.

On Tidying Up

The principles of tidying up can apply to all facets of life. Throw out what doesn’t bring you joy and what you don’t see making you happy in the future. Learn from what you have done in the past and throw it out to make room for new happiness and fulfillment.

On Building a following

Who are your true fans that would buy anything you decided to make? Excluding close friends and family, who do you have the closest relationships to? We’re defined by the lives we touch and the impact it makes. As the older sibling I’m drawn to coaching as a way to leave my mark on younger guys and athletes. I have a little brother and as a result from training now have many other “brothers” on their journey athletically and academically. I established my rapport by showing them things I knew worked. From there I had their trust to follow whatever I recommended based on past experience. It follows with people finding you online and see what you write or pontificate about. Develop rapport and relatability by showing what you’re working on, where you’re struggling, what you did to get past it, and the next step in the process.

It doesn’t matter how many thousands of followers you have on instagram if you are trying to make a quick buck from using your discount code. If you truly want to make a difference and get paid for it, consider narrowing your scope of audience and developing relationships with the 1000 people that are close to you. It’s more manageable than remembering ten thousand or a million names and allows you to hone down your niche. Akin to practicing one skill instead of being a jack of all trades, focus your intent on what the thousand truly want and you’ll be able create a community uniquely yours.

From a recent talk I attended, I’d like to give my commentary on how I interpreted these advice statements on life. Watch the video before reading my versions of how they apply to me, as how I view each statement and how the speaker explains his side will vary. I challenge you to come up with your own response. You’ll be able to grow through introspection of the points outlined below.

Social Media Marketing and Online Dating

People are meeting each other on apps more than real life. pictures and videos become more important in making your first impression to potential matches. Therefore you should follow the same principle on social media as real life: be interesting, or don’t be boring. Live in the moment, but document bits and pieces to provide the minimum social proof to others that come across your profile. the medium is the message so what will you make your message be? Instagram is seen as your highlight reel, so actively pursue opportunities to make highlights.

I go to a weekly church service where the topic of choice is “self care”. In this weeks lecture, the discussion was over how you need to not look for the next step in life but rather enjoy the present. Life is an infinite game and we can’t help but look at the next steps. We focus on what we don’t have rather than what we do, and the infinite power we have to create. Thinking “if I had XYZ, then I’d be happy” is allowing something external (money, sex, attention) to fill a void that only true relationships with other people and your faith can fill. Self care in this sense is done with the network of people that care for you.

A couple weeks into the New Year and many are staying strong with their resolutions.

Those that are struggling may find it helpful to read books such as Atomic Habits or follow blogs like Praxis for productivity advice. I’ve compiled some thoughts from a few reputable sources that give the most bang for your buck. And added a couple tools for tracking and monitoring progress.

I have a hard time training with regular gym-goers. I hate it when I see “resolutioners” come through the door and get into the squat rack. Freaking hate it. Three months later, it’s like they were never there.

It’s depressing. Why come to the gym if you aren’t motivated enough to put a consistent effort? Are you not seeing results? Bored with your current program? What gives?

I have “resolved” to make 2019 the year of doing instead of consuming. I’ve been inspired by people like Nat Eliason, David Perrell, Tiago Forte, and many others that writing and speaking are skills that are underdeveloped. I suck at writing. I am meh at speaking. The best way to not suck is to practice. Therefore, I am committing myself to a few things:

The question then becomes when we don’t have a goal in training how do we stay motivated in the gym and what can we do to make sure that each phase of training builds into each other? The answer requires analysis of where you are currently at and where you should be.

This an open letter to the countless iterations of complaining I hear from myself or others (mostly others) every day. Whether it’s about his fitness, his awkwardness with women, his dissatisfaction with his job, or lack of energy, I get tired of his inability to not want to change himself. The friction he faces in improving himself is knowing that he won’t be good at it or he will fail a lot more when he decides to try. The fear of failure is something we all have at some point in our lives, so I feel that what I write in this letter will apply to those that are having that same fear. At the end of it I hope to change some minds and inspire others to see failure as a source for growth and embrace the suck that inevitably comes with trying new things.